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By engineering plants like Nicotiana benthamiana or algae
to produce therapeutic proteins, developers can:
• Avoid mammalian viral contaminants
• Reduce unwanted glycan structures that provoke
ADA formation
• Scale quickly with lower production costs
Just as importantly, plant-based proteins can be formulated
for oral delivery, enabling a full immune-compatible
pipeline: low-immunogenicity production + tolerogenic
delivery.
Companies like Zea are pushing this frontier forward—
combining molecular biology, immunology, and
formulation science to produce biologics that are built for
both precision and peace.
Plant systems also offer a unique benefit: the possibility of
expressing multivalent or “soft” antigens—engineered to
look more like naturally encountered proteins and less like
lab-made invaders. This may further reduce the risk of
tolerization and expand the therapeutic window for long-
term use.
3. Tolerogenic Adjuvants and Immune
Instructional Tools
Traditional biologics are often delivered “naked”—with no
immune modulation other than the protein itself. But newer
platforms recognize that co-signaling matters. Just as the
immune system needs to see the antigen, it also needs to
hear how to interpret it.
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